


Liasons

by Sionnan



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-04
Updated: 2011-10-04
Packaged: 2017-10-24 07:28:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/260671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sionnan/pseuds/Sionnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-series guardian fic. Mom and Bro finally meet, leading to some unintended consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liasons

It was never fully dark in the room, and for that reason she wasn't entirely comfortable. There was no way to hide this, and anemic streamers of dusky light painted the wild tufts of his fair hair a paler color.

He was drunk. He was anguished.

He had his head down on his forearms and was sobbing like a tired child. One skinny hand was wrapped around the neck of a beer, and several dead soldiers littered the table and ground around him. The motel logo made its slow revolution, the low moan of the massive stalk twisting filling the quiet air, and the light bathed the room in a bloody neon, the dark spark of the bottles taking on a flat patina.

Vivian was not good at this. Her husband- God, it seemed so long ago, but it was less than five years- would work himself up from a snit into a towering rage in the face of her frigidity. He would make comments about her openess. It would segue from her disinterest to her (assumed) distrust, and eventually, it always landed into the subject of the bedroom. About her complete lack of sexual interest in him; she was like a mannequin. She might as well have been. Many times, much like the mother she swore she would never become, she would calmly sip three fingers of brandy as he ranted.

Three became four, and then five, and by the time Jack had exhausted himself or his rage, she had stopped understanding much of what he said.

She wanted to tell him she wasn't some bitch. She couldn't orgasm on command. But like the lady she was raised to be, she instead checked her watch, and went to the kitchen to make supper. It was amazing she never set anything aflame, given that she was so soused she couldn't read the numbers on the stove. God only knew what Jack did, because he only came in when she had finished setting the table with the heritage white china and the crystal, but with that tacky stainless steel dinnerware his sister gave them, and she poured herself a generous glass of the wine that would compliment their dinner.

She never rememberd if he apologized for his tantrums. The wine was too good, and even though the area was prone to sudden and violent storms, she enjoyed the stars though the expanse of windows if they were out. She named the constellations, though she never could recall if it was in her head or aloud. Jack would leave, and she would slowly savor the silence and the wine as she waited for the stars to make their move.

And here, in this disgusting little motel room, they had made a check.

Or, rather, they had made their check long ago, but Vivian was really only beginning to comprehend that now. In the face of this child's distress over her calmly delivered sentence.

She supposed that it was acceptable for him to mourn like this. It had taken him all day to reach this point, and Vivian watched it lurk in the corners of his eyes, the lines in his forehead, the thick bob of his gullet as he fought down something unnameable and terrible. She wondered what it was like to be so affected by something; the only thing that came so close for her was Rose, but even then she approached the little girl with the same unflappability that characterized her entire life.

And in turn, the child mirrored her. It was unnerving. She was a Machiavellian little girl, and as much as Vivian marveled at the intellect and interest that was housed in that tiny, chubby little shell, it was just as much uncanny.

When they reached the hotel room, he had produced several six packs out of nowhere, though she suspected he had visited the convenience store when she used the pay phone out on the street. He offered her some; she took one, and began watching him. He was a talker, like Jack. Though unlike Jack, the subject of his conversation was never about himself. It was about everything and nothing; about the meaning of life and how the lowest life had the best probability of surviving the end of all life. About the child he raised in a small apartment, living on one lump of cash to the next she gathered, and the terrifying and hilarious experience of single parenthood. The beer in her hand was not the brand she favored, and it got warm and flat as she held it, dangling over one crossed knee, her hand propping up her chin as she listened to him.

Eventually, she warmed to his heat, his ardour for life.

She began asking questions. He was an honest and direct young man, and he answered them, even ones that stole the slightly inebriated smile from his face, and replaced it with repeated trips to the rim of his bottle.

She finally asked him what was it like to know the date he was going to die.

He had blinked, and she suddenly understood that the gravity of the situation had not fallen upon him yet. Like all young creatures, the idea of his demise had been a distant concept. Another boy just like him, who liked cheap beer and rap. Anybody. But not him.

And like all adolescents, he grieved more keenly than an adult like Vivian couldn't begin to remember doing. Her own childhood seemed an eternity away.

His shoulders shook, the wrinkled tshirt he was wearing forming new folds with his motion. His free hand was curled on the table, face hidden in the arm. He was trying to breathe in between his sobs, and it produced a hitched rhythm. The air was beginning to take on the warm, wet scent of tears.

Vivian gradually realized that she felt responsible for causing this level of distress. It was a realization that drew upon her, her carefully styled brows gathering together as it came to her in increments. The abstract ponderousness of the cosmos that constantly swept her mind free of trouble was piece by piece getting cluttered with snatched impressions of the boy and his pain. He raised his head, and the security lights from the parking lot painted his profile with a limn of light, barely showing the puffy eyelids and the red tracks the tears left down his fair skin.

He was saying something, somewhat incoherently, about needing to check in on Dave. She belatedly remembered that was the name of the child... their child... that he raised alone. He was staggering to his feet, rubbing his face, the threat of his own mortality lost in his sense of responsibility. He collapsed on one of the beds, legs folding under him, as he took up the bedside phone.

Even though his fingers shook and twitched, it only took him one try to dial the number. In the silence, Vivian could hear the deep gulps of spasms left over from his crying. She checked her watch, a tiny sigh escaping her. The watery light was barely adequate to show the face, but she determined the baby sitter she hired should have put Rose to bed by now.

He started to talk. His voice was a little strained, but held insistent wry humor. He addressed the younger child like a peer, all the while peppering him with questions like, did you eat, did you lock the doors, did you, are you, will you.

Goodnight.

I love you.

No, nothing. Go to bed. Don't watch Jerry Springer, your mind will fall out of your ears, and then how will I explain that to your teachers.

The phone was replaced with a soft click of rigid plastic. He sighed, trapped in his throat, reaching up one arm to scrub at his face. It still didn't have the sinewy strength of a man, and the lines of it travelled smoothly from elbow to wrist with barely a buldge of bone.

It was then that Vivian's heart broke just a little. She hardly noticed it at all.

She stood, smoothing out her dress, and in the close room, the rustle of the fabric against her skin sounded like water over glass. The pink took on a gaudy hue; it was a demure rose color, but in this lighting it seemed deeper.

He didn't notice as she approached, but flinched away when she sat next to him. He let out a surprised breath, and murmured something about not doing that to him. She placed a hand on his shoulder. He was warm from alcohol and emotion, and his shirt was a little wet where his head had hung, tears sliding down his face and dropping from his sharp chin to the farbric.

She put one slender hand on the side of his head, and drew his head to her chest. He resisted at first, stiffening, but she persisted, and he leaned against her like a wary cat.

It took him several seconds before his entire body relaxed at once. He slumped, the lines of his body falling against hers, and his weight forced her to put her other arm over his back and far arm.

Vivian held him.

\---

At some point, he was on her. On her, in her, and his scent filled her mouth and nose, and he smelled of young flesh and warmth and sweat and tears. His breathing was ragged, close to her ear, and he made harsh little sounds that escaped his throat and cut through the rumble of the sign outside. The light spilled across his back, in valleys and peaks of muscles and bones, the liquid of the blanket slipping down around the swell of his buttocks.

The rhythm in his hips was so steady it was possessing, and Vivian thought of the sonorous pulse of the stars and the deep spaces in between, and her mind directed automatically to the pinpricks of light

to the streaks across the sky

burning closer and closer to earth

and she did not come, because all she could think of was that the boy on top of her, in her, filling her, was a dead boy.

And her thin arms arced across his back, and she cradled his head against her shoulder with her own, and she rocked with his rhythm. In the dark, she heard a soft, sibillant breath issue from her teeth, between her pursed lips and she knew that she was hushing him. "Shh, shh, shh."

He was too drunk to come, and eventually he wound himself down, the rhythm falling apart beat by beat, pulse by pulse. He gasped a shuddering last breath, a tremor seizing his hips, ruffling the bedclothes. He left her, falling from the bed to clamber up on the other, sprawling on it with loose limbs compounded by youth and inebreiation. She drew the covers over her breasts, the coarse weave rasping on her nipples, and she listened to his hitching breathing in the dark. She fell asleep to his breath steadying, and woke again sometime in the night, the too bright light of the bathroom spilling into the room. She lifted herself with one arm, groggily, and saw him sitting in his boxers, knees drawn to his chest, hands clenched in his hair, in the bathtub. There was nothing in his eyes, now bare of the juvenile sun shades he wore. She fell asleep again.

\-----

He was so young. He was sitting on one of the faded, steel-frame chairs, one leg jittering, betraying his otherwise impeccably stolid face and posture. She cooked breakfast in the kitchenette, forbidding him to help when he tried. She served him silently, sitting down across from him and pouring some of her vodka into her portion of orange juice. He eyed it, and then her, and that wry smile, the one that said he'd seen it all and by now thought it was funny, crossed his face.

They ate in silence.

She left him at the bus stop with a peck to his cheek and a wave as she left to get to her car. She could see him watching her as she drove away, until his form was obscured by the desert dust.


End file.
